School of Hard Knocks: A Lesson
by SpecialRelativity
Summary: Saitama never was the brightest, at least when it came to tests and other silly things like that. But for all his lack of book smarts, he possesses a certain...wisdom about what it truly means to be a hero, and what it takes to really work for something. A certain character or two from the FoZ universe will be getting schooled: Saitama-style. Punching involved. One punch, one shot.


**Author's Note: First publication. And I own nothing. So, surely not worth suing, right? Right?**

 **Inspired by the "training session" between Saitama and Genos.**

 **Please bear with me; still sorting some formatting issues.**

* * *

Saitama sighed heavily. How in the name of all that was holy did he get in _this_ annoying position again? He did his best to block out the prattling of the obnoxious dandy in front of him so he could think for one second, but the fop just went on and on about the Power of the Nobility, the Worthlessness of the Commoner, the Inevitability of his Defeat and so on, all while clinging to a _literal rose_ he wielded as a wand.

The student body of the Twister academy of...no, wait, the Tristan...Tristian?...the Whatever Academy of Magic was gathered round for the spectacle, including the pink-haired one who had irritated the normally _extremely_ laid-back Saitama to the point of very nearly hitting something for real. Speaking of irritating, sure enough, there she was, yelling at him yet again about how foolish he was being and how he should know his place as her dog. Heck, he hadn't even wanted to get involved in this stupid duel in the first place. All he wanted was to get back to his quiet apartment, make some dinner, and watch some TV, hoping against all hope that some monster would appear on the news that would finally give him the challenge that he longed for above all else.

The selfishness of his deepest wish was not lost on him—catastrophic damage and loss of life would ensue in any battle that required him to actually try, especially if he really had to worry about losing, yet he couldn't deny the urge to fight, the hunger for the rush that only comes in a battle for one's life, or even the basic feeling of mortality, of _threat_ , that, when lacking, leaves one feeling less than truly alive.

One thing was for sure—he wasn't going to find that challenge in this place. Dang it, they didn't even have microwave ovens, and the markets were deplorable! The lack of basic 20th century sanitation alone…

Saitama sighed once again. It was all because of that portal…

* * *

For a bald commoner in absurd clothing, Guiche's opponent was remarkably unconcerned with the fact that he was about to duel The Bronze, one of the top mages (in his own mind, at least) in the Tristanian Academy of Magic, himself in the glorious flesh. Clearly ignorant of the vast difference between them in power, skill, and mere worth as a living creature, Guiche decided to take the magnanimous route and instruct his foolish opponent of his severe disadvantage, thus giving him a chance to surrender. Perhaps if he polished his boots or something as penance for his temerity, Guiche would be merciful and allow him to live in the stables rather than selling him into slavery or outright killing him.

"Commoner! It seems you are unaware of the magnitude of the mistake you are about to make! For you are about to duel with Guiche de Gramont, The Bronze, fourth son of General Gramont, a Noble of Nobles! Though your impertinence knows no bounds, let it not be said that Guiche de Gramont was without mercy—should you bow and scrape for my forgiveness, I may yet let you live, and perhaps, in my magnificent...uh...graciousness, let you—"

His monologue was rather rudely interrupted by a heavy sigh from his opponent, who wasn't even looking his direction. Guiche seethed inside. Did this mongrel not know his place!? He cast a sidelong glance towards Montmorency; she really needed to be impressed by this, considering that this duel was mainly to make her forget she had just been two-timed, and if he struggled this hard to intimidate a hairless clown in a yellow jumpsuit and cape—wait, she was looking at the commoner instead of him!?

All thoughts of looking the gallant noble vanished from his mind. "Fine," he growled, at least as best as he could. "If you will not show proper deference to your betters, then it will have to be taught by force. Prepare to face the power of Guiche the Bronze, son of—"

"You said all that already." The expression on the commoner's face never changed.

Guiche nearly blew a coronary. Gritting his teeth, he shouted, "Bronze Valkyrie! Come aid your master!"

* * *

Saitama watched with ever so slightly renewed interest as a petal fell from the rose in the annoyance's hand, touched the ground, then, in a flash of light, turned into a metal golem with full on wings and a spear. His eyebrow raised a sliver; he had seen plenty of weird stuff back home, but he couldn't remember anyone summoning armored figures out of a rose petal. Maybe, just maybe, this world could offer some entertainment, at least. He uncrossed his arms.

"OK."

Meanwhile, Louise was nearly having her own apoplectic fit. "FAMILIAR! I AM ORDERING YOU TO STOP! I AM NOT GOING HAVE MY FAMILIAR KILLED OFF A DAY AFTER PASSING THE SUMMONING CEREMONY! SERIOUSLY, STOP! NOW! I SAID _NOW_! WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS!? WHY WON'T YOU LISTEN!?"

Saitama just shrugged. "I'm a little curious about how strong he is. I'm not getting my hopes up much, though. And your voice is very loud. Weren't you ever taught manners?"

Guiche was having a rather bad day. He simply could not comprehend why this commoner was so dense! Did he have a death wish!? He ground his teeth some more.

"Since I am called the Bronze, a bronze Valkyrie will be your opponent. I wouldn't—"

"Not gonna fight for yourself, huh?"

Guiche nearly exploded. "Who are you!?" he bellowed. "What gives you any right to speak to me!? Who were you born to, you animal!? What have you done that earns you the right to stand my equal!? Nothing!"

At this point, Louise, who had been hopping up and down right behind Saitama trying to get him to listen to her, nearly jumped out of her skin. A sound, one which should have been utterly unassuming, penetrated her senses and prickled her hindbrain like a snapping branch alerts a rabbit to a predator. She immediately shut her mouth and backed off, looking for the source of the sound. Just the simple squeak of rubber crinkling, but, coincidentally, she felt a small, but intense *WUMP* of compressed air hit her like a shockwave at the same time she heard the sound. She looked down and saw—her familiar had clenched his fist. How in the Founders name that could cause a shockwave…

Then she looked up at his face. For the second time since he arrived, she saw it—a glimpse past the bored and unremarkable features—a face hardened into something that would make the hardest steel look positively liquid, and an aura of power at which the very earth beneath trembled. The face of a god.

"You talk too much," Saitama intoned quietly, but with a great deal more gravity than usual. "It's high time we got started."

It seemed Guiche had seen through the veil for a brief moment too. Despite his rage, his hand trembled and he felt a chill run down his spine accompanied by a sudden spike in adrenaline, the way one would feel if you walked into a room, locked the door behind you, then turned around and saw that a sleeping tiger was in fact locked in with you.

But whatever Guiche's animal senses were telling him, all his eyes saw was an impudent, bald brat in ridiculous clothing, and blast it all, this brat needed a lesson!

"Go, Val—!"

"Oh, and what's behind you back there?"

Saitama's question went unanswered for a moment, and many confused looks were exchanged.

"I mean, does anyone live that way?"

One student managed to find most of his voice. "Uh...that way is the ocean. I...don't think anyone lives in that mountain range next to it..."

"OK, good to know," Saitama deadpanned. Somehow this was even scarier than before.

Guiche finally managed to clamp his jaw shut. "Go, Valkyrie!" he shouted, his pride and rage providing the desperate bravery needed to keep his knees from buckling from the overwhelming sense of foreboding. The Valkyrie lunged forward, faster than the eye could follow.

Well, most eyes, that is. Two of them followed it just fine.

The Valkyrie launching doused the last ember of hope Saitama had that this place would have anything remotely challenging. Despite its novel method of appearing, it was just an ordinary metal statue, moving at very ordinary speeds, with a very ordinary pointy end on its spear. As he watched it speed towards him, a heavy sense of homesickness welled up inside. Sure, it wasn't like anything back on Earth ever made him work for it, but it wasn't this pathetic. He missed his apartment, his local supermarket, his TV, his futon—heck, he even missed Genos following him around. He was far less annoying than these teenage brats, and he at least had a sense of heroic duty, however naive it was. And he did the dishes really, really well, too.

Saitama stood there and thought about what to do about the pointy metal thing rushing towards him. His normal lazy impulse would be to just stand there and let it hit him, as in his current funk even lifting a finger seemed like an effort. But no, that thing was fairly sharp, which meant it would probably rip his clothes if he let it hit him, and he had no idea where to go around here to get them fixed, not to mention how much time it would take. Guess he had to block it.

With another sigh for the ages, Saitama lifted his finger…

What happened next was beyond anyone's perception. The atoms on the very tip of the spear found their momentum suddenly and utterly canceled as a force that could only be considered infinite hit them in their proverbial faces. Of course, all this kinetic energy couldn't simply just disappear, so the atoms did what they normally do in collisions and tried to get the offending collider to take some the responsibility for the extra energy, and they were willing to settle for many forms of transaction, such as rotational, vibrational, thermal, photonic, and even nuclear forms of energy. Those Laws of Physics were real sticklers for total conservation, so those leading atoms did the equivalent of filing Policy Adherence and Accident Report forms in triplicate to their insurance company in an attempt to settle the matter quickly.

However, they quickly found out that whatever infinite force they collided with wasn't having any of it, which was simply unheard of. Left with the responsibility of taking all the collision energy themselves, they metaphorically huffed and emitted large amounts of light and heat, hoping the Laws of Physics wouldn't get too fussy or ask for board reviews of their conservation performance or anything like that. Unfortunately, bouncing backwards and trying to maintain any sort of elasticity in the collision was out of the question, what with the hoards of atoms behind them now facing similar problems as they hit the quantum logjam in front of them. As one could expect, this created a lot of crowding, and, to all the atoms' great vexation, signaled the Pauli Exclusion Principle to pop up like a blasted ambulance chaser and say no, you can't all be in the same place at once, thank you very much. This caused the already highly perturbed atoms to tell Mr. Pauli to "stick it where the photons are out of phase", and a growing sense of consternation swept across the local Relativistic Reference Frame review board as they wondered what the Laws of Physics were going to think of this mess. They needn't have worried, as the Laws of Physics took one look at the situation, recognized the infinite force, and threw up their (anthropomorphized) hands and said (metaphorically, of course), "Not this again. Screw it."

Of course, to the observers at the Tristanian Academy of Magic, none of this cosmic quantum drama was noticed. All they saw was the Valkyrie's spear crumple up like an accordion before the whole metal mess came to a complete stop, utterly failing to move the bald man's finger in the slightest. Their collective jaws hit the floor upon realizing there wasn't even a pinprick left from the Valkyrie's spear tip, the unreality of the situation simply shutting down their ability to react.

Guiche also noticed, and the niggling sense of foreboding was now full blown terror. More on fight-or-flight instinct than anything else, he summoned half a dozen more Valkyries and flung them at the bald menace.

Professor Colbert had been surreptitiously watching the duel from a distance, his curiosity overwhelming even his sense of scholarly duty. He had heard rumors of this familiar of Louise's, and wanted to see for himself if they had any validity. Oh sure, he would intervene if he truly felt any of his students were in danger. But after what he just saw—

Saitama raised his hand as if to deliver a backhand blow. But no one saw any blow. In fact, no one saw anything for a brief second as the vicious blast of air made everyone blink to protect their eyes. Upon opening them again, they all saw Saitama's hand in the forehand position, as if the blow had already been struck. And apparently it had been, as the Valkyries were now flying backward, tumbling end over end like leaves in the wind across hundreds of meters of Tristanian landscape.

Professor Colbert's perception was better than most, and even he didn't see the blow. It was as if the bald man's hand simply teleported across his body. However, he did see what happened to the Valkyries: they had snapped back as if struck _before_ getting within range of Louise's familiar's hand—the implication of which was that the mere wind from the strike was enough to blast the solid bronze Valkyries away like so much debris before a hurricane. Just what was this guy?

Guiche stood, clenching his wand in an absolute deathgrip, lest the sweat on his palms cause it to slip from his hand. Knuckles white and hands shaking, he just stared at Saitama, almost hypnotized, unable to move or think, with only a detached part of his brain just watching with a morbid curiosity what his opponent would do next.

Which was, apparently, nothing. Saitama just stood there, again doing the impossible by looking even more bored than before. After a minute or so, Guiche's brain managed to peek out from beneath the mental bed it was hiding under to see the shining dome of the commoner's scalp no closer to him than before. He was just...standing there.

More in a panicked desire to get it over with than anything else, Guiche called out, "Well!? What are you waiting for!?"

Saitama's eyebrow moved up microscopically, although its movement looked way more significant as it was completely alone on his head, the last surviving hairs of his training regimen.

Seeing as he was thus far completely unharmed, Guiche's pride finally managed to smack down his terror, being (substantially) less rational and having not yet felt any direct (that is to say, painful) consequences for its displays of bravado. Such are the follies of those so inexperienced in pain and death…

"Could it be that you are frightened? Too scared to attack, perhaps?" Guiche's hindbrain was now clambering on his pride's shoulders, trying desperately to clamp a hand over its stupid mouth and apologize to the _existential-level threat_ in front of it, but Guiche never did listen well to his hindbrain. "Do something! Show me who you—"

 _ **Blur.**_

 _ **Red.**_

 _ **DEATH.**_

These microcosms of concepts, on the very quantum level of human perception, flashed through Guiche's mind far, far faster than they could be processed. By the time the light from the events entered his eyes, was received by his retina, processed by the optic nerve, and sent to his brain, Saitama's fist was already in his face.

The Universe had to play quick catchup too, and with a jumpy start like a runner hearing the starter pistol while he was still busy tying his shoes, burst into action to try and accommodate the impossible movement that just happened. The shockwave split the very sky from horizon to horizon and barrelled through the Halkeginian planetary crust, heaving aside mountains, plains, and oceans in its passage like a legendary Titan of old digging his heel across the face of the world.

Guiche saw none of that. He simply froze, Saitama's red-gloved fist immobile less than an inch in front of his eyes. For a moment, nothing in the world moved as the dust cleared.

"You have no idea what you're talking about." Saitama's quiet voice seemed to ring out in the dying thunder of his world-ending punch. "Everything you have was given to you. You've earned none of it. Your power, your title, your nobility, your name—nothing. And for that reason, you have no idea of the value of it."

Other than the fading rumble rolling across the land, travelling far away until it was no more than a tremor in the air, silence ruled. No one, not even Professor Colbert could find it in themselves to speak, or even move.

"And that's why you will never get better, never improve. Until you know what it means to work for something, to train to the point of death, _of losing your hair,_ you will forever be stuck as you are. Weak."

Saitama turned his gaze, dreadful, framed in a face of stone, to Louise, who's heart nearly stopped.

"And that goes for you, too. You ought to know better than to look down on those who haven't been given the same things as you. Haven't you experienced enough of that for yourself? Unfortunately, it seems you haven't learned your lesson yet."

And like a curtain falling over a masterpiece painting, a shutter closing over a lighthouse, Saitama sighed and seemed to slump, and, just like that, looked like no more than a goofy bald guy in a silly costume again.

"Tsk. Bunch of crazy baldies." He turned as if to walk away, but stopped.

"Oh, and—"

He spun back and flicked Guiche in the forehead with his finger, sending Guiche flopping down onto his expensively clad buttocks.

"—I win."

Then he did turn and walk away, muttering something about finding a decent market with a self-checkout line that accepted coupons.

A full minute or so passed before Guiche managed to pick himself up off the ground and begin dusting himself off. He slowly raised his eyes, fully expecting to meet the humiliating stares of his classmates boring into him. He saw, however, that they weren't looking at him, but instead were staring slackjawed, unmoving, behind him. Guiche looked back to see what was so captivating.

And he saw why Saitama asked if anyone lived back there...


End file.
